HISTORY AND EVOLUTION OF AVIATION ENGINES

1. Definition of aviation or aeronautical engines

Aviation engines or aeronautical engines are those that are used to propulsion
aircraft or planes by generating a force that moves the plane or aircraft forward.
Its fundamental difference with car or boat engines lies fundamentally in its
structure; it is made with more resistant or compact materials and at the same
time lighter, which makes its production more expensive. There are two basic
types of aviation engines: piston (reciprocating) engines and reaction engines
(which include turbines). Recently, thanks to the development of joint ventures
including NASA , the production of electric motors for aircraft that run on solar
energy has also begun.

2. History of aviation engines

Thanks to the Otto Cycle , the internal combustion engine was invented, it
would be applied to aeronautics at the end of the 19th century. These water-
cooled engines generated power by means of a propeller . The propeller, due to
its two warped blades, propelled the surrounding air mass, dragging the
airplane forward, producing flight. In 1903 , the Wright brothers managed to
realize the almost impossible dream of flying a device denser than air. The
engines were perfected over time, managing to take advantage of their power
and then being mounted on the first transport and military aircraft, such as those
of the First World War . Between the years 1940 and 1950, the first jet engines
were created to be used in combat aircraft in World War II . From the
discoveries in physics and fluid mechanics, Bernoulli's Principle was taken, a
theorem on which the bases for the invention of war rockets and jet engines
were based, whose principle is based on physical laws such as the principle of
action and reaction. The last commercial transport aircraft used four 36-cylinder,
3,500-horsepower radial engines ; Examples of this are the Douglas DC-7 and
the Constellation Lockheed 1049G . Later, the big change would come to jet
engines, which were initially Straight Jet engines, that is, with direct air flow,
(they did not have fans). The aviation engine industry has made a great
technological leap; Today turbofan engines are used in commercial aircraft. For
fighter aircraft, their performance has been improved; they do not use the
turbofan mechanism but the Afterburner is an afterburner that increases the real
thrust of the engines during a forced maneuver. In modern aviation, two types of
engines are basically used: turbofan and turboprop. Although engines with solid
fuels are also used in aeronautics, those mounted on airplanes, both
commercial and military, use liquid fuels. In small aircraft it is common to use
internal combustion engines that are not based on the principle of gas turbines
but on the reciprocating movement of pistons.

3. Evolution of aeronautical engines

The first engine that made an airplane fly was the Wright, from 1903, it had 4 in-
line cylinders in a horizontal position, cooled by water. Its power was 12hp and
the Wright brothers devised it themselves, since the automobile factories did not
offer them any that were light enough.
In France, Santos Dumont and other pioneers used Antoinette engines with V
cylinders, also cooled by water, for their first flight attempts. Vertical line
engines soon appeared. Air cooling began with engines such as the Darracq
fan 2-cylinder. This latter 25hp was used by Louis Blériot for the first crossing of
the English Channel in 1909.
Between 1908-09 the French Seguin brothers developed the star rotary engine
and from then on new configurations for aviation engines were created.
The Seguins' first rotary engine was the Gnôme with 50 hp and 7 cylinders that
rotated around the crankshaft fixed to the plane, which was a success, giving
rise to new models created by the Gnome brand itself and by others such as
Oberursel in Germany, Clerget and Le Rhône in France and Bentley in Great
Britain. Rotary engines reached their peak in World War I and were the engines
used in the most famous fighters of the war. At the end of the war these engines
were used mainly in school apparatus.
The 4 or 6 vertical cylinder water-cooled engine was used since the early years
of aviation. The Germans used them a lot in their Daimler, Benz and Argus. The
1920s brought the virtual disappearance of water-cooled linears, but small air-
cooled linears for light aircraft emerged with force, pioneered by the British
Cirrus (1925) and de Havilland Gipsy (1927). Later they were manufactured by
more brands, finally imposing the inverted arrangement of the cylinders.

The most used formula for many years for small-power piston engines is air-
cooled horizontally opposed cylinders. After the aforementioned Darradq and
other pre- and post-war twin cylinders, the American 4 cylinders appeared, led
by the famous 38hp Continental A-40 manufactured in 1928. In addition to the
Continental, the Lycoming and Franklin adopted this configuration.

Although the aviation engine with V-cylinders cooled by water (Antoinette,

Curtiss) or air (Renault, by Dion Bouton), appeared before World War I, the
great revolution in this type of engine came with the Hispano-Suiza initially.
developed in Barcelona and the Rolls-Royce. The 300 hp Hispano-Suiza 8Fb
was one of the first engines (if not the first) that weighed less than 1Kg per
horsepower.

The star or radial engine with fixed cylinders began to be used massively in the
1920s and was largely due to the British 420hp Bristol Jupiter that was
reproduced in many countries. The appearance in America of the smallest
Wright Whirlwind represented a very important progress in terms of reliability for
aviation, this was the engine of Lindbergh's famous flight and the Pratt &
Whitney Wasp, originally of 400 hp used in commercial and military aircraft
(especially fighters). . The most powerful American radials of the 1920s, the
Wright Cyclone and the Pratt & Whitney Hornet, had worldwide distribution.

On the eve of World War II, double-star engines widely used in the war began
to proliferate, such as the Pratt & Whitney R-1830 and R-2800, Wright Cyclone
R-2600 and R-3350, Bristol Hercules, BMW 801, etc. .)

4. Engine types
 Combustion or piston engines

Aviation as we know it began thanks to the propulsion of aircraft using piston

engines, also called reciprocating or reciprocating engines. Although other
methods and forms of propulsion existed, the engines allowed constant working
propulsion, operated mainly by gasoline . Due to the rudimentary technology of
the late 19th century, it can be attributed in part to the development of engines
that powered flight was possible at the beginning of the 20th century. For
example, the engine used by the Wright brothers ' Flyer III, made with the help
of mechanic Charles Taylor, was a great success due to its excellent power-to-
weight ratio, since it was a 170-pound engine that produced about 12 HP at
1025 RPM.

 online engine

This type of engine has the cylinders aligned in a single row. They normally
have an even number of cylinders, but there are cases of engines with three or
five cylinders. The main advantage of an inline engine is that it allows the
aircraft to be designed with a reduced frontal area that offers less aerodynamic
drag. If the engine's crankshaft is located above the cylinders it is called an
inverted inline engine, this configuration allows the propeller to be mounted in a
higher position, at a greater distance from the ground, even with a short landing
gear. One of the disadvantages of an inline engine is that it offers a poor power-
to-weight ratio, because the crankcase and crankshaft are long and therefore
heavier. These can be air-cooled or liquid-cooled, but are most commonly
liquid-cooled because it is difficult to get enough airflow to directly cool the rear
cylinders. These types of engines were common in early airplanes, including the
Wright Flyer, the first aircraft to perform powered controlled flight. However, the
inherent disadvantages of the design soon became apparent, and the in-line
design was abandoned, remaining a rarity in modern aviation.

 V engine

In this type of engine, the cylinders are arranged in two banks, inclined with a
difference of between 30 and 60 degrees, that is, in a V shape. The vast
majority of V engines are water cooled. These offer a higher power-to-weight
ratio than an inline engine, while still maintaining a reduced frontal area.
Perhaps the most famous example of this type of engine is the legendary Rolls
Royce Merlin, a 27-liter 60º V12 engine used, among others, in the British
Supermarine Spitfire and Hawker Hurricane fighters, which played an important
role in the Battle of Britain. and in the successful British Avro Lancaster bomber.
The Daimler-Benz DB 600 Series is also a good example of V12 engines, in this
case that were fitted to many German aircraft from World War II.

 Radial or star motor

In 1925 , the radial or star engine appeared, a four-stroke, air-cooled engine

with generally odd cylinders arranged around a crankshaft (although there are
even numbers of cylinders). The great leap of these engines was to allow more
power with less weight, greater reliability than rotary engines and unlike these
they had a fixed block where the crankshaft is housed and the cylinders are
screwed, so in this case the cylinders did not rotate around to the crankshaft as
in rotary engines; They have less assembly complexity compared to in-line or V
engines since they do not need the liquid cooling system or its components.
However, in-line and V engines were still widely used and were no longer the
same inefficient machines from the beginning of the century. The first known
development for the radial engine was from a list of requirements that the
United States Navy published for the different inventors and engine
manufacturers to develop a power plant capable of overcoming the problems
presented by other forms of propulsion for the time and that favored the
production of a radial engine. The result of this development was the successful
Curtiss-Wright Whirlwind J-5, and together with its later competition, the Pratt &
Whitney company, they became the two largest manufacturers. These engines
were produced until the early 1960s, when they were definitively displaced by
jet engines. Radial engines are responsible for expanding aviation as a
transportation system that could become safe, massive and efficient. Airplanes
increasingly grew in size, weight, passenger or cargo capacity, and complexity,
and their application in the 1930s was the key moment from which aviation
stopped being an insecure, exclusive, and risky field.

 Horizontally opposed cylinder engine

Another emerging system almost parallel to the radial engine but with a minor
inference in the aviation industry was the horizontally opposed cylinder engine
(see engine layout. These engines have 4, 6 and exceptionally 8 cylinders that
are located in banks with pairs of opposing cylinders. With much smaller
displacements than radial engines, opposed-cylinder engines propelled general
aviation because they are relatively small, lightweight, and can fit into small
aircraft compartments where radial engines might be too large, heavy, or
complex, or were found to be unsuitable. airplanes too small and cheap to
house a turbine. These engines continue to be manufactured to this day by
various companies, generally American, German, French and Russian, and are
used by a wide range of light aircraft, both general aviation and military and
commercial aviation. Eventually the octane rating offered to operate them was
increased to the current measurement of 100 to 110 octane, in AvGas 100LL
gasoline.

 rotary engine

One of the most revolutionary engine arrangements was the rotary engine (not
to be confused with the Wankel Engine ), in which several cylinders (along with
the engine block) rotated around a crankshaft , that is, the cylinders rotated
while the crankshaft remained fixed, being the precursor arrangement of the
radial or star engine and widely used in aircraft of the First World War . This
engine, unlike the in-line or V engine, was cooled by air that hit the rotating
cylinders at constant operating speeds and were four-stroke engines. However,
these engines were very unreliable, because they ran at maximum power all the
time without being able to control the flow of gasoline (they could only be turned
on or off), their internal components were not made to withstand several hours
of use, they tended to to overheat above 350 °C, a temperature at which
various components begin to melt and puncture, allowing oil to leak and
immediately ignite, causing the engine and aircraft to catch fire, an event that
claimed many lives in the First World War. , a time when parachutes or fireproof
suits were not available.

 Reaction engines
Historically there have been three types of jet thrust, however the one that was
most operationally successful was the turbojet. The other two types are the
Pulsejet engine developed in Germany during World War II to power the V-1
and V-2 bombs and the Ramjet engine which requires a turbojet to raise the air
flow rate to more than 1 Mach (speed of sound) to be able to propel a large
mass of air that enters at high pressure and temperature into combustion with
injected fuel to reach much higher speeds; Currently only the Ramjet engine is
known to be in the Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird . The engines commonly used
today in commercial aviation, long-range private aircraft and helicopters due to
their great power delivery. Their operation is relatively simpler than that of
reciprocating engines, however the manufacturing techniques, components and
materials are much more complex since they are exposed to high temperatures
and very different operating conditions in terms of altitude, performance and
internal speed. the mechanisms. The core of these engines is a gas turbine
that, through the expansion of gases through combustion, produces a jet of gas
that propels the aircraft directly or moves other mechanisms that generate the
propulsive thrust. Turbojets are generally divided into zones of main
components that run the length of the engine, from the air inlet to the outlet: the
intake zone usually houses an inlet or manifold with a low compression
compressor and a compressor. high compression, in the combustion zone is
where the fuel is injected and burned in the combustion chamber mixed with the
compressed air from the inlet; This results in a high delivery of gas flow that
ultimately drives a turbine (the "heart" of the engine). Finally, at the outlet is the
exhaust nozzle, which directs the flow of gases produced by combustion. The
most common types of jet engine (erroneously known simply as turbine
engines) are:

 Turbojet engine

Sometimes called turbojet. The gases generated by the gas turbine, when
expelled, provide most of the engine's thrust. It was the first form of turbojet
system and was invented by Frank Whittle, who conceptualized this novel form
of propulsion in the late 1930s. Being repeatedly rejected by the British Air
Ministry, as it could violate the Treaty of Versailles that prevented aeronautical
developments for war or military purposes, Whittle published his theories in
several scientific journals, at the same time that in 1935 he founded the Power
company. Jets in which he insists on making his new engine work. Ironically,
the German engineer Hans von Ohain, inspired by Whittle's publications, is the
first to build a jet engine for a manned aircraft under the sponsorship of Dr.
Ernst Heinkel, however like Whittle, the project was rejected. by the Luftwaffe
for different reasons despite having three different fully tested prototypes ( He-
178 , He-280 and He-162 Salamander) and the Messerschmitt company was
awarded authorization to build a fighter powered by a jet engine, the famous
Messerschmitt Bf-262 , the first non-experimental and production aircraft to be
powered by turbines. It would end up producing the most advanced jet engine
of World War II , the Heinkel He S 011. After World War II , the Rolls-Royce
company led the development of turbojet engines in the mid-1940s, and later
the General Electric and Westinghouse companies dedicated themselves to
manufacturing variants of these engines in the United States. Pratt-Whitney was
the first American company to produce a completely new engine with American
development, the Pratt & Whitney J-57, awarded the Collier Trophy award as
the "Greatest Aviation Achievement in North America." Turbojets were the first
jet engines used in commercial and military aviation. They featured
unprecedented greater power that allowed the development of larger aircraft
that flew at higher altitudes and high speeds. Thanks to their turbojet concept,
they are the engines that are popularly known as "jet propulsion engines". Its
narrow and elongated shape, like a barrel or cigar, allowed for more
aerodynamic profiles and more efficient aeronautical designs. Unlike
reciprocating engines, their power is not measured in horsepower produced but
in pounds of thrust, and the ability to produce thrust is affected by much higher
altitudes than in piston engines due to the high internal operating speed. and to
the compression of the air they propel. The vast majority of the early types of
turbojet produced centrifugal thrust, because the compression of the air is done
by centrifugation of the air circulating inside the engine. Nowadays they are out
of use due to their high noise and low fuel efficiency and are only found in old
and military-type aircraft.

 Turbofan engine
In the turbofan engine (turbofan powerplant) the gases generated by the turbine
are used mainly to drive a fan (fan) located in the front part of the system that
produces most of the thrust, leaving only a little space for the exhaust gas jet.
part of the work (approximately 30%). These engines began to use the axial
flow system, which keeps the stream of compressed air pressed towards the
turbine shaft, so the air is propelled with greater speed and with less tendency
to dissipate from the outlet stream. This significantly increases efficiency.
Another great advance of the Turbofan was the introduction of the double flow
system in which the front fan is much larger as it allows a stream of air to
circulate at high speed through the external walls of the engine, without being
compressed or heated by the internal components. This allows this air to remain
cold and advance at a speed relatively equal to the hot air inside, causing that
when the two flows meet in the exhaust nozzle, they form a torrent that
amplifies the magnitude of the outflow and at the same time becomes a
narrower flow, increasing the total velocity of the exhaust air. This type of
engine has a great thrust delivery, allowing the development of airplanes with a
much larger cargo and passenger transport capacity, and at the level we know
today. It is the engine used by most modern jet aircraft due to its high
performance and relative fuel economy compared to a Turbojet. They are
normally two-shaft motors, one for the gas turbine and the other for the fan.
However, Rolls Royce plc produces three-shaft turbofan engines, which
correspond to the Trent series models.

 Turboprop Engine

Also called turboprop. These engines do not base their operating cycle on the
production of power from the thrust of the gases that circulate through them, but
rather the power they produce is used to move a propeller. In a similar way to
turbofans, the turbine gases are used entirely to move a propeller that
generates the thrust necessary to propel the aircraft. This is achieved using a
gear reduction box, as the operating speeds of a Turboprop are over 10,000
RPM, too fast for a propeller. As in most reciprocating engines, the engines
have governors that keep the speed of the propeller fixed and regulate the pitch
of its blades (constant speed, variable pitch propeller). The power of turboprop
engines is measured in turbo horsepower or SHP (shafted horse power). They
present great operating economy relative to turbofans, and allow an
intermediate operating power between reciprocating engines and turbines, so
their use is restricted. to propel airplanes with greater autonomy, speed, size
and/or performance than those that operate piston engines, but that are not as
fast, large and autonomous as those that use propellerless turbines. They are
successful in operating regional aircraft that do not have to cover long distances
and have also become an option to increase the power of piston aircraft. The
Lockheed C-130 "Hercules" is a successful example of what the turboprop
engine has meant for medium air transport or the new Airbus A400M. There are
also turboprop versions that several general aviation aircraft manufacturers
offered to the public such as the Cessna 441 Conquest, the Piper PA-42
Cheyenne IIIA, or the Piper PA-46T Malibu; Likewise, Beechcraft has the twin-
engine King Air series, which has been in production for just over four decades
with different models. The application of the turboprop has also been extended
to military training and/or attack aircraft such as the Embraer EMB 314 Super
Tucano, the Beechcraft T-34C Mentor or the FMA IA-58 Pucará, in this case a
twin-engine aircraft. There are other types of turbine engines such as propfan
that are in the experimental phase.

 Rocket Engine

Few aircraft used rocket engines as their primary means of propulsion. The only
mass-produced pure rocket aircraft was the German World War II
Messerschmitt Me 163 interceptor, powered by the bipropellant liquid-fueled
Walter HWK 109-509, which due to its short fuel life had to glide back to the
ground. As experimental rocket planes, the Bell X-1 (first plane to overcome the
sound barrier) and the North American X-15 stand out. Rocket engines offer a
lot of thrust but little autonomy and are not used as aircraft propellers because
their efficiency is quite poor, except at high speeds. Mixed propulsion with other
types of engines has been tested in the 1950s , especially in the military field,
but as soon as the reliability of jet engines improved, the idea was abandoned.
The only operational implementation of mixed propulsion was rocket-assisted
take-off (RATO), a system used on heavy aircraft.
  Other alternative engines

Some reciprocating Diesel cycle engines made of lightweight materials have

recently been developed, starting from the field in which horizontally opposed
cylinder engines are located. The Diesel engine offers greater relative torque at
low operating revolutions, a difficulty that gasoline engines used in aviation face
since they must deliver maximum power at lower revolutions than in automotive
engines in order to increase durability and profitability. The companies working
on its development strive to produce engines that have the economical fuel
consumption of Diesel, with the air cooling of current engines. Emphasis is also
placed on reducing emissions since the current technology of Diesel engines
allows us to offer engines that are more environmentally friendly than engines
that use 100 octane gasoline, since to achieve this high octane rating the use of
lead cannot be dispensed with. as is done in cars. In addition, the Diesel engine
has proven to have a repair system that involves fewer components (in some
cases only piston pins, rings, and injection pump are changed) and its durability
is much greater. This would significantly extend the TBO (time between
overhauls) hours, making operating aircraft with reciprocating engines a less
costly activity for owners and operators. Electric motors have been developed
for some aerospace specialties that include power supply through solar energy.

5. Graphic representation
 online engine
 star type motor

 turbojet engine

 v engine
 rocket engine